her territory, and
started out with her upon the neutral highroad that led to the station.
They lingered, for the hour was propitious, and their plan was to kill an
hour or so before the evening train. As the glow came over the lowlying
fields, the weary forms of the labourers began to fill the road. At a
distance Hauptmann perceived one who importunately offered a small object
to the sightseers and was as regularly repulsed. Without waiting for the
professor, who stood at attention while Frauelein Linda sketched, this
beggar or pedlar approached and prayed to be allowed to show a rare and
veritable object of antiquity. A gruff refusal had already been given
when she pleaded that they hear the peasant talk, and inspect his
treasure. "Who knows, Herr Professor, but it might be Lombard?" "Wohlan,"
he replied, and sullenly took the proffered spearhead. It was of iron,
patined rather than rusted, Lombard in form, and of evident antiquity.
Hauptmann gave it a nearsighted look and was about to return it
contemptuously when the peasant urged, "But look again, sir, there are
letters, a rarity." "I dare you to read them," cried Frauelein Linda, and
the Professor read painfully and copied roughly in his notebook a short
inscription in some Runic alphabet. A scowl followed the reading and the
abrupt challenge "Where did you find this piece?" "In the fields,
digging, Padrone," was the answer, "where I dug up also this," displaying
a bronze clasp of unquestionable Lombard workmanship. "Bravo," exclaimed
Linda, "now perhaps we shall know more about your dear Lombards. I
congratulate you, Herr Professor, from the heart." "Aber nein," he
growled back, "there were monuments enough already, and this is only a
bore, for I must buy and publish it. Others too may be found in the same
field, and Lombard will become a popular pastime. It is disgusting;
compassionate me. It was the single language that permitted truly
a-priori approach. It would be almost a duty to suppress these accursed
runes for the sake of scientific method. But no; the harm is done. We
must be patient."

What the Herr Professor said and continued to say as he drove a hard
bargain with the peasant was but half the story. A glance at the runes
had shown an awful double consonant, and, as if that were not enough, an
appalling modified vowel. By a single word scratched by the untutored
hand of a rude warrior the most ingenious linguistic hypothesis of our
times was shattered